Sean Burke

Somewhere around Kenmore Square, I looked up from my paper and recognized the man sitting next to me as John the Baptist.

Excerpts from a Seer's Diary

5/28/10

Today I saw twilight convulsing in my vegetable crisper. Yesterday, it was an Ice Age in the couch cushions. The day before that, I found a solid gold heart that bled liquid birdsong in a Tupperware bowl. It's nice to find things[...]

6/10/10

I decided to buy a new cell phone today, but when I left the mall and looked down at my hands I was just holding a paper crane and a satchel of Nero's fire. Later on, I taped sheet music to the soles of my shoes and the sound of my walking made a thousand
little lungs bloom on the birch boughs[...]

6/12/10

It was a quiet day. The waves were enormous after the storm and I spent the afternoon batting at the moon. How it shook! [...]

7/4/10

I put 50¢ in the little machine outside the Market Basket entrance and a distant planet tumbled out from the slot. Later, I saw a stray sphinx eating a Burger King wrapper in a dumpster downtown. Just now, I felt everyone on Earth blink at once[...]

7/13/10

I took the train into Fenway to see the game today. Somewhere around Kenmore Square, I looked up from my paper and recognized the man sitting next to me as John the Baptist. He was wearing a leather AC/DC jacket and gold-frame Aviators. "You're telepathy's flawless," he said, not really
to anyone, "but moons are staggered and lopsided across your teeth. Please try to sleep with decorum." Though Beckett didn't have his stuff, Pedroia sacrificed to right to win it in the bottom of the ninth[...]

7/26/10

I learned to talk to the ants today. They're nice. Like you'd expect, very diligent. However, I consider myself closer in kind to the trees, one of light's unabashed gluttons[...]

8/5/10

Today a black hole formed in my cereal bowl. The Lucky Charms broke into billions of atoms before being sucked through the void[...]

8/10/10

I was mowing the lawn today when a fawn approached with a bleeding dahlia budding from its forehead. The deer carried a half-dead finch in its mouth with a scrap of parchment placed inside its beak. I wanted to help,
but when I moved toward the dying bird it suddenly transformed to an opera glove like Jackie O wore in the 60s. The dahlia fell to the fresh-cut grass and the deer ran off. I didn't know what to make of it[...]

Sean Burke lives in Dover, NH. His poems are published or forthcoming in several journals including
Now Culture, Strange Machine, Ludwig, Sawbuck, and Glitterpony.